PISCINA
115
PISCOPIA
was still in existence in Rome in 1832. Another cate-
chism was compiled later by Father Roger Rigbie
at Patuxent. The Indians generally were well-
disposed to the new teaching, and, other Jesuits hav-
ing arrived, missions were established at St. Mary's
(Yaocomoco), Mattapony, Kent Island, and, in
1639, by Father White, at the tribal capital Piscata-
way, which, from the name of the layac or great chief,
Kittamaquund, "Big Beaver", was .sometimes known
as Kittamaquindi. Here on .5 July, 1640, in presence
of the governor and several of the colonial officers
who attended for the purpose. Father White, with
public ceremony, baptized and gave Christian names
to the great chief, his wife, and daughter, and to the
chief councillor and his son, afterward uniting the
chief and his wife in Christian marriage. A year
later the missionaries were invited to Nacochtank,
and in 1642 Father White baptized the chief and
several others of the Potomac tribe.
About this time the renewed inroads of the Sus- quehanna compelled the removal of the mission from Piscataway to Potopaco, where the woman chief and over 130 others were Christians. The work pros- pered until 1644, when Claiborne with the help of the Puritan refugees who had been accorded a safe shel- ter in the Catholic colony, seized the government, deposed the governor, and sent the missionaries as prisoners to England. They returned in 1648 and again took up the work, which was again interrupted by the confusion of the civil war in England until the establishment of the Cromwellian government in 1652 outlawed Catholicism in its own colony and brought the Piscataway mission to an end.
Under the new Government the Piscataway rap- idly declined. Driven from their best lands by legal and illegal means, demoralized by liquor dealers, hunted by slave-catchers, wasted by smallpox, con- stantly raided by the powerful Susquehanna while forbidden the possession of guns for their own de- fence, their plantations destroyed by the cattle and hogs of the settlers and their pride broken by oppressive restrictions, they sank to the condition of helpless dependents whose numbers constantly diminished. In 1666 they addressed a pathetic petition to the assembly: "We can flee no further. Let us know where to live, and how to be secured for the future from the hogs and cattle". As a result reservations were soon afterward established for each of twelve villages then occupied by them. Encroach- ments still continued, however, and the conquest of the Susquehanna by the Iroquois in 1675 only brought down upon the Piscataway a more cruel and persistent enemy. In 1680 nearly all the people of one town were massacred by the Iroquois, who sent word to the assembly that they intended to exterminate the whole tribe. Peace was finally arranged in 1685. In 1692 each principal town was put under a nominal yearly tribute of a bow and two arrows, their chiefs to be chosen and to hold at the pleasure of the assem- bly. At last, in 1697, the "emperor" and principal chiefs, with nearly the entire tribe excepting appar- ently those on the Chaptico river reservation, aban- doned their homes and fled into the backwoods of Virginia. At this time they seemed to have num- bered under four hundred and this small remnant was in 1704 still further reduced by a wasting epi- demic. Refusing all offers to return, they opened negotiations with the Iroquois for a settlement under their protection, and, permission being given, they began a slow migration northward, stopping for long periods at various points along the Susquehanna until in 1765 we find them living with other remnant tribes at or near Chenango (now Binghamton, New York) and numbering only about 120 souls. Thence they drifted west with the Delawares and made their last appearance in history at a council at Detroit in 1793. Those who remained in Maryland are repre-
sented to-day by a few negro mongrels who claim the
name.
In habit and ceremony the Piscataway probably closely resembled the kindred Powhatan Indians of Virginia as described by Smith and Strachey, but except for Father White's valuable, though brief, "Relatio" we have almost no record on the subject. Their houses, probably communal, were oval wig- wams of poles covered with mats or bark, and with the fire-hole in the centre and the smoke-hole in the roof above. The principal men had bed platforms, but the common people slept upon skins upon the ground. Their women made pottery and baskets, wliile the men made dug-out canoes and carried the bows and arrows. They cultivated corn, pumpkins, and a species of tobacco. The ordinary dress con- sisted simply of a breech-cloth for the men and a short deerskin apron for the women, while children went entirely naked. They painted their faces with bright colours in various patterns. They had descent in the female line, believed in good and bad spirits, and paid special reverence to corn and fire. Father White gives a meagre account of a ceremony which he witnessed at Patuxent. They seem to have been of kindly and rather unwarlike disposition, and physi- cally were dark, very tall, muscular, and well propor- tioned.
Archims of Maryland (29 vols.. Baltimore, 1S83-1909); Boz- MAN, History of Maryland (2 vols., Baltimore, 1837); Brinton, The Lenape and their Legends (Walam Olum) (Philadelphia. 1884) : Hughes, History of the Society of Jesus in North America: I. loS0-t6i5 (Cleveland, 1907) ; Mooney and Others, Aborigi- nes of the District of Columbia and the Lower Potomac in Amer- ican Anthropologist, II (Washington, 1889); New York Colonial Documents (15 vols., Albany, 1853-87), s. v. Conoy; Piscataway, etc.; Shea, Catholic Indian Missions (New York, 1854); Smith, General History of Virginia (London. 1629; Richmond, 1819). ed. Arber (Birmingham. 1884); White. Relatio Itineris in Marylandiam, Marj'land Historical Society Fund pub. no. 7. (Bal- timore, 1874). James Mooney.
Piscina (Lat. from piscis, a fish, fish-pond, pool or basin, called a,\so sacrarium,thalassicon, or fencstella), the name was used to denote a baptis- mal font or the cistern into which the water flowed from the head of the person bap- tized; or an ex- cavation, some two or three feet deep and about one foot wide, cov- ered with a stone slab, to receive the water from the washing of the priest's hands, the water used for washing the palls, purifiers, and cor- porals, the bread crumbs, cotton, etc. used after sacred unctions, and for the ashes of sacred things no longer fit for use.
It was constructed St. Camcc-a cathedral, Kilkenny
near the altar, at (Xni Century)
the south wall of the sanctuary, in the sacristy, or some other suitable place. It is found also in the form of a small column or niche of stone or metal.
RorK. Church of Our Fathers, IV (London, 1904), 194; BiN- TERlM, Denkwurdigkeiten, IV, 1, 112; Theol. prakt. Quarlalschrifl (187B), 33. Fr.\NCIS MeRSHMAN.
Piscopia, Helena. See Cornabo, Elena Lu- CREZIA Piscopia.
